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Joe did his best to answer the question. “Yes and no. Guy offspring are born in nests now, and kept in domesticated brooders until they’ve grown enough to take an imar of their own. They maintain a stock of imars bred for biddability and more useful hands, but rebreed them with wild ones to keep the line strong. See, they have two kinds of sex: imar sex, to continue that breed; and Guy sex to make more Guys. Imars come in male and female, mate once about every two years, and the female lays a clutch of eggs. Usually only one offspring, the nastiest one, survives—its brothers and sisters become baby food. Guys mate only once or twice in their whole life—and they live to be well over a hundred. It takes two to mate, each Guy forming and finally producing a small blob of protoguy. The two blobs are put together, then the pair work together to shape its development. They’re real deliberate about this. Humans put less time and thought into building a starship than Guys put into making a baby. Their population remains quite small and stable, with just under a thousand Guys alive at any time. Guy sex is—”

Serena put her hand on his arm to interrupt him and grinned. “Tell me, do you always talk about sex right after you meet a woman?”

Joe blushed. “No, I only, well…”

She patted his arm. “I’m only teasing you again. All this is fascinating, and I really do want to know everything. I don’t believe you can treat another race with the proper respect, and do what is in their best interests, unless you understand as much as you possibly can about them.”

He gave her a sidewise look. “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but that’s a kind strange philosophy for someone from BCT.”

“It shouldn’t be,” she said heavily, taking her hand away and staring straight ahead. “But it is. I lived with tribes in Southeast Asia, South America, Africa, and Arizona. I learned a lot about how other races have been treated both rightly and wrongly—mostly wrongly. I’ve had an uphill battle since I joined the family business. BCT has to change how it does business, and I intend to see those changes made.”

“Does your father know how you think?”

She let out a humorless laugh. “Oh yeah. We’ve got an odd kind of relationship. He knows I think BCT cuts too many corners, bends too many rules, and treats the more primitive races no better than we absolutely have to. He knows I think things should be done differently, but figures working out in the field will make me see that the get-bys and sneak-arounds are what get us anywhere and bring in those profits.”

She shook her head, her jaw set. “Well, he’s wrong. The more of that sort of stuff I see, the more determined I am that BCT will change. I’ve even started privately lobbying the BAA to tighten up its rules and regs.”

“The company bigwigs must really hate you.” Joe blurted it out without really thinking.

She laughed again, sounding both amused and bitter. “They don’t love me, that’s for sure. They know that sooner or later I’m going to be in charge, and when things are done my way profits are bound to take a hit.” She shrugged, as if being on the shit list of some of the most powerful people alive were an everyday thing. Which it must have been. “The way I figure it, once you’ve got a few gigabillion in your pocket being too ruthlessly greedy trying to grab more is just bad taste.”

“That’s sure the way I’ve always felt,” Joe agreed, trying to keep a straight face.

She peered at him slantways, the corner of her wide mouth quirking upward. “Now 1 think you’re teasing me.”

Joe took her to meet Bull. He couldn’t help but remember the first time he’d met a Guy. Although he’d been cloaked by a forcefield that could have protected him from anything short of a small tactical nuclear weapon, coming face to face with a 2 1/2 meter, 250 kilo, vaguely dinosaurine creature with hunting knife talons and a saber-filled mouth at the top of its head had been somewhat taxing to his toilet training. Some of that came from what the experts called exoanxiety, an atavistic fear from being in the presence of the truly alien. A lot of it came from another deep wired human response; the habit of judging if the Other was more dangerous than you, and by how much. One look at a Guy and he’d instantly known that he was outclassed. It could obviously go toe to toe with the biggest baddest predator his planet had produced in the last ten million years or so, and win the bout in about five seconds flat.

Serena had to be brave because she certainly wasn’t stupid. She’d unhesitatingly walked right up to Bull, introduced herself like he was just some interesting looking person at a party, and within a very few minutes had him explaining how the Guys’ loosely structured society worked. Her questions managed to be tactful and respectful, yet at the same time probing. By the time they moved on an hour later he’d learned things he’d never picked up during six months of dealing with them on a daily basis. Gentleman that he was, Bull never once brought up any of his race’s complaints against her father’s company.

Next he took her to meet Ard, a practitioner of an art the Guys called by a name that was exceptionally long even for them. Humans called it morfing.

The range of lifeforms on Marguy’s single small continent was bewilderingly diverse, far more so than the standard models would predict. That was because there were jokers in the evolutionary deck, namely the Guys. Using some as yet unquantified ability certain individuals possessed, the genetic makeup of existing flora and fauna were altered to create entirely new species. Some were created on purpose as pieces of self-replicating biological technology, others simply because their creator thought they might be interesting or beautiful.

This suggested the tantalizing possibility that at some point the Guys might be willing to create custom biota exclusively for BCT. Joe couldn’t understand why, with this at stake, Frank seemed so willing to risk alienating them. He could only assume Testa smugly believed that because of his natural superiority the wogs or whatever he privately called the Guys would sooner or later give him what he wanted anyway.

Serena had sat with a stillness which would have made an Indian hunter proud for almost an hour, her entire being focused on watching Ard work, even though there was really nothing to be seen because the changes were being made at the chromosomal level. In spite of that she found the experience as exciting as a game of polo or whatever it was her people watched, and was in high spirits as they went back to the BCT site for lunch.

The hour Joe had planned to give her had already turned to almost three, and he was willing, even shyly eager to spend the rest of the afternoon with her as well. Sure, she kept saying things that made him and the BAA look bad, but it wasn’t from some rich snotty viewpoint. She genuinely accepted the Guys as equals and felt that they deserved, like Petra had said, nothing but the very best her race had to offer.

He figured that after lunch they could do a bit more touring, and when the time seemed right he could bring up the matter of Frank’s continuing violations of the Coverture. He had a feeling that she’d land on Testa like a ton of bricks. He could have told her then and there, but he couldn’t help wanting to stretch out their time together as much as he could first.

But halfway through their meal she got paged by Frank and he got a call from Mabel saying Petra wanted to see him ASAP. So they went their separate ways with an agreement to get back together later.

The way that had come about was her simply saying, We’ll get together later, while Joe was still figuring out how to suggest that very thing. She seemed to take his saying yes for granted. So that’s what he said, feeling both relieved and unnerved that she seemed almost as interested in him as the Guys.